India\'s 70% companies have used gig workers in 2018\, says report

India's 70% companies have used gig workers in 2018, says report

This informal space started getting recognition across the globe and emerged as the gig economy where workers come, gig and leave.

Press Trust of India  |  Mumbai 

With the advent of start-ups there is a rise in gig economy and in 70 percent corporates have used at least once for major organisational issues in 2018, according to a report.

The survey revealed that men and women both have an almost 50:50 split in the gig economy against the traditional workforce where the ratio is about 70:30, a report 'The Future of Work is Anywhere - Gig Workforce' by Noble House has revealed.

It said, 70 percent of respondents from the hiring side have used at least once or twice for solving organisational issues in 2018.

For this report data was gathered from over 800 (HR) professionals and independent consultants was evaluated to understand perspectives around the gig economy.

Further, the report said, nearly 45 percent of the (HR) heads surveyed want to hire a gig worker so that they can supplement skills of the existing workforce, 39 percent would do this to reduce the cost and 10 percent for filling temporary vacancies in their teams.

Gig economy constitutes a large segment of workers, such as self-employed, freelancers, independent contributors and part-time and is yet very much fragmented.

This informal space started getting recognition across the globe and emerged as the gig economy where workers come, gig and leave.

"We found that a large segment (81 percent) has joined the gig bandwagon in the last five years. The data from the consultants registered on the Noble House platform suggests that the organised segment is seeing more interest across the metro cities, with at 43 percent emerging as the biggest hub followed by Mumbai at 19 percent and Bangalore at 18 percent," Sanjay Lakhotia, Co-Founder, Noble House Consulting Pte said.

He said, the gig economy has allowed organisations to engage the best talent including skilled individuals in the mid-to-senior level positions, for specific value-add tasks in a cost-effective manner.

Meanwhile, the report found that 73 percent independent consultants indicated they would prefer to continue working as independent consultants any day over a regular 9-5 job.

Only 21 percent wished to go back to a full-time position.

On being asked how frequently they were hired as a freelancer, 70 percent consultants claim to have been hired between 1 to 2 times in a year.

About 40 percent of the people in the gig economy have more than 20 years of experience and another 38 percent have between 11 and 20 years of experience, it added.

Businesses have trusted in the talent acquisition and training and development functions of the HR domain, the most, the report said.

These are also traditionally the easier to outsource activities, it added.

First Published: Fri, March 01 2019. 19:45 IST